tmay

danvm said:

foregoneconclusion said:

danvm said: I the iPhone/iPad is like a video game consoles, then they should allow others stores like Sony and MS did with EA Access, right?

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/games/ea-access/
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/entertainment/xbox-one/live-apps/ea-access

EA Access (which is now EA Play) is a subscription service that offers early access to newer full price games that you still have to purchase (so Sony and MS still get a 30% cut on those) as well as a "vault" of older EA games that you can play for free. If you want to play games online, obviously you're going to need to purchase that capability from Sony and Microsoft as well. So it's not really a store like xCloud and it's not really a way for EA to avoid paying a cut. 

My post was about the comparison of Apple devices as "app consoles" and gaming consoles. If that was the case, then Apple should not have any problem allowing 3rd party stores. 

About your post about fees, I think Apple should get what they deserve, considering it's their app store.  At the same time, developers, big and small, have valid points about Apple App Store fees and other restrictions, for example with cloud gaming.  Maybe Epic suing Apple and Google was to drastic, but that's what we have today. 

This DLC fee represents a big chunk of those console makers' revenues, too. "Add-on content" was a full 41 percent of Sony's Game and Network revenue in the latest completed fiscal quarter. Microsoft saw a 39-percent increase in gaming revenue the quarter after Fortnite was released, too, coyly attributing the bump to "third-party title strength." And the Switch saw similar post-Fortnite digital revenue increases after Nintendo announced that fully half of all Switch owners had downloaded Fortnite.

If you think Epic is right in principle about iOS and Android, then they ought to be making the same argument about Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. A computer is a computer. “Consoles” are a business model and user experience design choice, and the iPhone and iPad are effectively app consoles, where games are just one type of app. It’s a shame (in more ways than this) that Apple TV isn’t a bigger player, because it’s just another variant of iOS.

But instead of fighting the game consoles, Epic is taking more of a hit: Fortnite players on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch get the 20 percent reduction in price while Epic still pays the 30 percent cut of each transaction to the platform vendor. It’s a stunt, pure and simple." 

Tim Sweeney's response to to a similar question back in June,

"Consoles are unique in that the hardware is sold at or below the cost of manufacturing, and is subsidized by software sales, whereas iOS and Android are insanely profitable for Apple and Google from just hardware sales and ads."

avon b7 said:

The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.

We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet. 

The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals. 

China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember. 

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/united-states

The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government. 

http://www.revista-redi.es/en/articulos/the-couso-affair-in-the-national-courts-and-international-relations/

This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states. 

One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.

Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison. 

These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.

The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.

The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.

US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.

One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations. 

Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.

The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."

Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."

Your fealty to China is noted.

For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one. 

China has never had that choice of governance.